Letters : Vintage medicine
Mill Hill, London
Andy Coghlan’s report on the capsules of polyphenols extracted from red wine
which promise to protect against heart disease (This Week, 22 February, p 4) is
enough to make the late Archie Cochrane turn vigorously in his grave. In 1979,
Cochrane, A. S. St Leger and F. Moore published their findings on wine
consumption and cardiac mortality in 18 developed countries in The
Lancet:
“If wine has a protective effect against IHD (ischaemic heart disease) death
then this is, in view of our results, more likely to be due to constituents
other than alcohol. Wines are rich in aromatic compounds and other trace
components which give them their distinct character and it may be to these that
we should look for the protective effect.”
They went on to say, with considerable foresight: “If wine is ever found to
contain a constituent protective against IHD then we consider it almost a
sacrilege that this constituent should be isolated. The medicine is already in a
highly palatable form (as every connoisseur will confirm). We can only regret
that we are as yet unab1e to give information to our friends about the relative
advantages of red, white or ros茅 wine”.
Letters : Green women
London
It has been established for years by insurance companies that women are safer
drivers. Now it seems they are “greener”.
A colleague of mine, at a women’s rights conference in Amsterdam last week,
learnt that there has been a study in France which proved that women who drive
buses there use less fuel than male bus drivers, because their driving style is
less aggressive.
Letters : True hell
Yeovil, Somerset
For the true location of Hell (Letters, 22 February, p 52) ask Christopher
Marlowe, who stated: “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d in one self
place, but where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be.”
Letters : Ozone ignorant
by e-mail
I read in Netropolitan that you were “somewhat taken aback” at someone’s
belief that ozone depletion and global warming were one and the same thing
(Technology, 1 February, p 19). In my experience, the confusion is rife in the
minds of a majority of the population.
This was hardly helped by an advert run a couple of years ago for a brand of
car, “It also runs on unleaded petrol, so it’s ozone friendly too.”
Letters : Best-laid headlines
Wokingham, Berkshire
The main heading in This Week (15 February, p 4) contains a grammatical error
which is inexcusable even for a 杏吧原创, whether New or Old.
“Chernobyl refuses to lay down” can only mean that it does not want to
deposit a bird’s underplumage. The verb “to lay” is transitive and needs an
object. A bird might lay some down in its nest when it is about to lay an egg.
You and I could possibly lay a blanket on the ground before we lie on it and
Chernobyl could refuse to lie down and die.
Letters : Spam and eggs
by e-mail
Thank you for Netropolitan’s note on tracing the addresses of advertisers who
send junk e-mail (Technology, 8 February, p 19). I have often been frustrated by
the lack of an e-mail address on some advertising. Once I got a particularly
long ad, complete with address, and e-mailed it straight back, a hundred times
over. As the address was wrong, it all bounced, leaving me with egg and spam all
over my face.
Letters : Third eye
Truro, Cornwall
Your article on the evolution of the eye (New 杏吧原创, Science, 8
February) has answered a long-standing puzzle for me over why so many people
have a mole or worty growth between the eyebrows. It must be a left-over
collection of cells from the original neural plate from which they develop. I’ve
always thought of it up until now as the pineal eye.
Letters : Minding the gap
Wallingford, Oxfordshire
I read with interest the article on Parkinson’s disease (“Seeing is
unfreezing”, 15 February, p 38). I frequently walk with my husband along a
concrete farm road (neither of us suffers from Parkinson’s disease). About every
15 feet is an inch-wide, earth-filled gap in the concrete running across the
road at right angles. We sometimes tease each other for altering our strides to
step over the “crack” rather than on it, apparently unconsciously because
engrossed in conversation.
We have always assumed this to be a response triggered by the memory of the
childish game of not stepping on the cracks in the pavement for fear that the
bears would get you. The article, however, suggests that our brains are being
fooled into treating the crack as an object to be stepped over not walked on. It
sometimes seems to require a conscious effort not to alter one’s stride to step
over the cracks. This admission is somewhat less embarrassing if it is because
the brain is responding to the visual stimulus of the line on the ground as
opposed to trying to play a childish game.
The phenomenon does not seem to operate on the small, square paving stones
around the house, where the cracks are less than a stride apart and run both
ways. Perhaps the brain perceives these cracks as a flat pattern that can be
walked on not stepped over.
Letters : Take with salt
Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire
In the article “Left for Dead” (8 February, p 37), why was there no mention
of Britain’s own “Salty water” in the boxed list?
Droitwich Brine is one of the strongest natural salt solutions that there is,
and one of the purest, I am told. For thousands of years (from Neolithic times)
salt was made in Droitwich from the natural brine which exists below the ground
here and used to bubble up to the surface as brine springs.
Salt-making from the brine finally ceased in 1972 when ICI’s salt works at
Stoke-Prior, near Bromsgrove, closed down. Like the Dead Sea, Droitwich Brine
has been used for many years for medicinal purposes. Droitwich was a thriving
spa between the wars and for some time afterwards. In the 1970s the old Brine
Baths complex closed and Droitwich was no longer active as a spa.
However, a new Brine Baths is now in operation, and the town can once more
legitimately call itself Droitwich Spa.
Letters : Precocious Rosie
Petersfield, Hampshire
Your photograph and information about Rosie, the “cow with a difference”
(This Week, 15 February, p 12) raised eyebrows here in backyard Petersfield.
How could an 8-month old heifer be lactating? Most don’t come into oestrus
until they are 15 months old. If successfully impregnated, a 9-month pregnancy
follows, a calf is born and lactation begins.
However, it would be possible to produce a small amount of milk from a heifer
if a cocktail of hormones was injected in succession. It would of course be
grossly abnormal to do this. Also, some of these drugs can cause uterine
contractions, which could be painful. How would the heifer feel about it, we
wondered . . . ?
Having checked with the company which owns Rosie, we were told that she was
indeed induced to lactate by being given hormones.
Once again, welfare of an animal appears to have been compromised in the
cause of productivity. And, should the enterprise take off, are we not also
likely to endanger the welfare of human infants, for whom, as we all know,
mother’s milk is best?
Letters : Lax headline
Kendal, Cumbria
I am concerned that the headline “Did lax officials let Britons drink a
deadly pinta?” (This Week, 22 February, p 5) gave a misleading impression of my
views.
I focused on how it was possible to determine the scale and extent of the
radionuclide depositions from Chernobyl on British grasslands. I emphasised the
importance of having a sound statistical basis for field sampling, but at no
time did I allege that Ministry of Agriculture officials were lax, as the
headline suggests.
Letters : Matter of trust
Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland
Mark Ward’s article on hacking via Web pages (This Week, 22 February, p 4)
raised an interesting problem. But the competing technologies, Java and ActiveX,
are not equally risky when used for Web applets.
Java was explicitly designed to prevent applets from interfering with the
surfer’s computer. For example, the language does not allow the local hard disc
to be accessed. ActiveX places no such restrictions on applets, which is why the
Chaos Computer Club were able to place spurious cash transfer instructions in
Quicken’s pending queue.
Security in ActiveX is supposed to be handled by a system of digital
signatures, registrations and “trusted” Web sites, but it is possible for unwary
surfers to turn off this protection and allow any hostile applet to infect their
machines.
While only the rash or the ignorant would claim that breaches of Java
security can be ruled out entirely, to date the only loopholes have been due to
faulty implementations of the language鈥攖hat is, bugs which can be, and
have been, fixed. The problems of ActiveX are much more fundamental, and in my
opinion cannot be fixed without a major redesign.
Let me put it this way: I think I understand the security issues involved,
and I’m not too worried about having Java enabled in my browser, but there’s no
way I’d use one that supported ActiveX.
Letters : Trading places
Brussels, Belgium
Your article (“Too dangerous to trade”, 8 February, p 12) targets three
African countries, but uses press quotes from a panel of CITES experts on the
unfortunate discovery of illegal ivory sales in Zimbabwe, to discredit a
successful regional rural development and conservation strategy which enjoys
increasing international support by leading conservation organisations and
governments.
What has happened in Zimbabwe cannot negate overnight this country’s good
record on wildlife conservation policy. But sadly, animal rights organisations
seem to be happy each time bad news on wildlife issues is reported in the
press.
The article also omits the fact that the panel’s report on Namibia indicates
that this country’s elephant management and legal controls do meet all the
criteria for renewed trade in elephant products. Why? Because this is good news
for conservation.
A number of Southern African countries believe that the long-term future of
the elephant will only be secure when its full economic value is realised and
reinvested in conservation incentives. If this does not happen in the near
future, in a few years elephants will be confined to protected areas and the
species will have disappeared from communal lands.
Finally, could someone answer the following question: why have elephant
populations in countries which have practised proactive management, including
culling and a regulated ivory trade, remained healthy or even grown while those
elsewhere on the continent have declined?
Letters : . . .
Isle of Skye
I read this article with interest until I reached the music, the time
signature is 6/8鈥攕ix quavers in a bar鈥攂ut in bar 1 there are 7
quavers and in bar 2 the left hand has 6 quavers and the right hand seems to
have 6.5 quavers.
Most musicians wouldn’t have any difficulty with seven quavers in a bar, but
how is bar 2 meant to be played?
Letters : Scoring points
Leeds
The article about the differences in piano sightreading techniques between
professionals and beginners (Science, 15 February, p 20) will interest many
musicians. I’m sure that most pianists would agree that efficiency and the
ability to pass over mistakes are very important aspects of good reading.
But it would be wrong to imagine that the differences stop there. The diagram
of eye movement showed the beginner glancing back to the key signature at the
beginning of the line. Experienced players use memory to determine many other
features of a piece, such as the dynamics and the phrasing of notes. Let us also
not forget another vital professional technique鈥攇uesswork鈥攂ased on
the knowledge of other music in the same style.
All these factors are more important still for some choral accompanists, who
may be sightreading 10 staves simultaneously鈥攋udging which parts are the
most important for the singers to hear, as well as watching the conductor,
turning the pages and protecting the music from draughts. My experience, and
that of fellow pianists, suggests to me that practice does teach you to read
more quickly, and to look farther ahead when necessary.
Letters : Down to earth
Sydney, Australia
There seems to be an excellent explanation of why evidence for the transition
from reptile to bird is hard to find in the fossil record in the “tree down”
model. (“Birds do it . . . did dinosaurs?”, 1 February, p 26). Learning to fly
would select very rapidly those that can.
If the precursor animal existed in large numbers, and easily produced large
litters, then falling off cliffs and out of trees would select quickly for those
who could survive it. The whole transition could have taken place in the
evolutionary twinkling of an eye, leaving negligible traces in the fossil
record.
This is in sharp contrast to other adaptations, whose evolutionary value was
not as critical to the next opportunity to breed, and which took long enough to
happen to leave a good record of fossils that can be found today.
Letters : Nice rice
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Fred Pearce correctly quotes David Pimentel, a water resources specialist, on
the quantity of water required to grow a kilogram of rice as about 2 tonnes
(This Week, 1 February, p 7).
Upland rice (rice grown under “upland”, usually rain-fed conditions, and
often on gently sloping lands) rarely produces as high a yield as flooded rice
primarily because of very much greater weed growth. The major use therefore of
water in the growing of rice in flooded fields is for controlling weeds.
While this might be quite acceptable where there are periods of abundant
water (monsoon rain), its justification under conditions where water has to be
conveyed from remote, dammed storage facilities, constructed at tremendous cost,
is fast becoming questionable. Water may be one of the most expensive
“herbicides” in the world. This is a factor which needs to be balanced against
the real social costs of dependence upon imported alternatives . . . machines,
oil and chemicals.
Letters : Linguistic challenge
Edinburgh
An obvious factor that contributes to the rankings in the “science olympics”
(This Week, 15 February, p 9) is language. First, the status of English as the
international language of science means that citations are a flawed indicator of
scientific value. Publications in other languages are going to be read鈥攁nd
cited鈥攍ess often, regardless of quality. This helps explain the relatively
poor showing of France and Germany, where researchers are under some pressure to
publish in the national language.
Second, even if the quality differences are real, they may reflect nothing
more than the advantage of conducting your professional life in a language you
can use without effort. With the exception of Switzerland, the countries that
lead the rankings are places where most people are either native speakers of
English (the US, Canada, Britain, Australia) or native speakers of closely
related languages who learn English in primary school (Denmark, Sweden, the
Netherlands).
Conclusions about national science policy may consequently be unwarranted.